In the last half century, the
concept of human rights, and the discourse that has been developed out of it,
have obviously had important roles, not only in political philosophy, but in
virtually all matters involving political and social life. Given the frequent
appeals for the respect of rights made by ethnic and cultural minorities and
disadvantaged groups throughout the world--by those who agitated for democratic
institutions in South Africa, in the countries of the former Soviet bloc, and
throughout Asia (e.g., in mainland China, in Myanmar, and in Vietnam), and
given the number of international agreements and charters spelling out the
rights and principles of conduct that must be respected within nation states,
the importance and the universality of human rights might seem to be beyond
dispute.

Yet the notion of
universal rights has long been the object of criticism. Within the western
philosophical tradition, authors as diverse as Karl Marx, Edmund Burke, and
Jeremy Bentham,[2]
have challenged the claim that there are universal human rights. Moreover, the
awareness of different cultures and different cultural practices has long ago
raised the question of whether there are any transcultural norms or standards.
And more recently, a number of critics have gone further, and have called the
notion of the universality of human rights into question for other reasons
still. The insistence on human rights, they say, is used primarily as a
political tool by western nations in obtaining concessions from developing
countries. Using this discourse as a substantive moral standard is also
illegitimate because it rests on a number of concepts that are peculiar to the
west, reflect questionable assumptions, and have no basis--and hence no proper
moral weight--in many parts of the world[3].
And, finally, it is argued that the introduction of the discourse of human
rights into non-occidental cultures can lead (or has already led) to a
breakdown in the ‘cultural identity’ and autonomy of those cultures.

Is it useful,
then, to continue to employ concepts like ‘human rights,’ and to insist that
such rights have a universal character? Is the call for ‘human rights’
consistent with the respect of cultures--particularly in those cultures where
the term ‘rights’ does not have a place? Is the notion of ‘human rights’
comparable with that of a collective, social good? Is it possible to prove that
there are such rights--such as the rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of
expression, freedom of association, and so on--and, if so, can such a proof
work in different cultures?

I

I want to address these questions
and concerns by approaching the issue of the nature, source, and limits of
human rights in an indirect way and by using an analogy. (Though the discussion
may seem at times a bit removed from the central topic, it will give us the
background for some important distinctions to be made later.) Specifically, I
want to start with an analysis of two familiar concepts, and then extend the
results of this analysis to two related terms that bear on the idea of culture.
This will enable me to draw some conclusions, not only about the relation of
the idea of culture to human rights, but also about the nature of these rights,
and whether one can have any reason to believe that there are universal human
rights.

The first concept
I want to discuss is that of ‘identity,’ in the sense of ‘personal identity.’
‘Personal identity’ is a notoriously vague notion--for to speak of the identity
of a person may be to refer to what that person ‘is’ at some particular moment
or ‘slice of time,’ or it may refer to that person over a period of time. It is
also a philosophically very puzzling notion; recall the example of 'The Ship of
Theseus,' and the question of whether an object, all of whose parts have been
gradually replaced over time, can still properly be called the same object. Or
again, can we speak of people remaining ‘the same’ people, despite growing
older, learning and changing their beliefs and values, maturing and, of course,
gradually forgetting the past or becoming senile? This is not just a
metaphysical problem, but a legal, an ethical, and a political problem.

Still, I think
that most of us would agree that personal identity involves continuity and
stability of consciousness over time and coherence in one’s ideas and
beliefs. The person who is pulled left and right by her desires and whims,
without any systematic way of organizing or addressing these desires and whims,
and without having a consistent will at all, is not much of a person and, so,
has no obvious identity. (Events that ‘interrupt’ or radically change our
consciousness, ‘end’ our identity. Physical death interrupts both physical and
conscious continuity; brain injury or senility do as well.) To have personal
identity, then, requires having a will and a continuous and coherent history--a
past, and the promise or expectation of a future (e.g., expressed through goals
and aspirations)--and perhaps the possibility of articulating a personal
narrative. While such an account is not without its problems, it seems to be
where many people’s intuitions on the matter lie.

Of course,
personal identity is more than this; it is not just continuity, coherence, and
stability. Most of us would insist that it requires a sameness. We often
think of personal identity as involving at least a genetic sameness (e.g., for
me to be the same person as I was 20 years ago, I would have to have the same
DNA) and having at least some of the ‘same’ or similar sense of self, memories,
tastes, inclinations, values, and so on. (In fact, if my values, tastes,
inclinations, and memories were all significantly different, someone who knew
me might reasonably say "He is not the same person I knew.")

Now, when we speak
of personal identity, we often want to identify what it is that distinguishes
one person from another. But to do this, we must also acknowledge that they
have a good deal in common, and that that person has many of the same
characteristics that other persons have. Identity involves not just what makes
one distinct, but what makes one like others--of the same kind or species.

But we should also
note what personal identity does not imply.

When we talk about
someone’s ‘identity,’ we are not necessarily talking about something that that
person has any control over; I may make my ideas, beliefs, values, and so on,
more coherent or consistent, but in doing so I don’t obviously make myself a
different kind of being than I was before. So the characteristics of being an
agent and of being free are not relevant to the issue of identity. (They may,
of course, bear on the issue of what kind of being I am--e.g., whether I am a
person.)

Further, when we
speak of ‘identity,’ it does not automatically follow that it is a value; it
just says that something is as it was in the past. Beings who have ‘personal
identity’ have a value,but it is as a
person that we are valuable, not just in being the same or similar to what we
were in the past.

To sum up, when we
speak of personal identity, we have in mind such things as:

1.the
stability of consciousness and the coherence of one’s ideas and beliefs,

2.the
presence of a systematic way of organizing or addressing one’s desires and wishes--i.e.,
one’s will

3.having
a history--a past, and the promise or expectation of a future

4.a
sameness that is more than a continuity

But, to have an identity is not
something that that being need have any control over. One need not even be
free, and being the same as one was before is not, in itself, valuable.

II

The second concept
that I want to discuss is that of (personal) integrity. Now, while
personal identity and integrity are clearly distinct, there is no contradiction
between them.

To begin with,
integrity suggests a ‘wholeness’ and consistency, and is opposed to incoherence
and inconsistency. When we speak of someone as having integrity, we speak of
that person’s basic beliefs and values, recognize that these beliefs and values
form a ‘whole,’ and acknowledge that he acts in a way is consistent or coherent
with those beliefs and values, and does so in a way that others can count on.
Integrity is a disposition--i.e., a way of looking at and
approaching the world, and a habitual intention to act in a certain way.
Integrity is, of course, also a moral quality, and so it not only describes the
characteristic of ‘wholeness’ and consistency, but implies a value. (And
because integrity is a moral notion, it is not purely subjective, and depends
on the existence of a moral framework that has its origin outside of that
person. One can be ‘called’ to act in a way that exhibits integrity.) The term
implies, as well, awareness of oneself as a being that can develop such a
disposition, and an explicit wish to bring his beliefs and values and so on,
into coherence or wholeness.

But while a person
of integrity holds to certain basic beliefs and values, it doesn’t mean that
she or he always holds all the same beliefs and values.

For example, we
are often confronted with novelty--things that are new or are significantly
different from our past experience. A person of integrity responds to novel
situations in a way that is generally consistent with the past; at the very
least, he seeks to act to bring the present novel situation into coherence with
his past experience. But it is clear that, in doing so, how the person
of integrity should act is not completely determined in advance. To act in a
way consistent with one’s past is not just a matter of repetition of past
actions or acting out of rote habit. Nor could it be. One is often not able to
deal with these novel situations entirely on one’s own terms; life rarely
permits us to control our situation entirely. But even if we could, we should
not seek to respond just on our own terms, for to do so is to deny the reality
and significance of the situation.

So the mere fact
that something happens that is new or different or unforeseen does not mean
that it will threaten our integrity. Rather new experience calls us out of
ourselves to act with integrity.(Of course, where something would undermine
all or most of our values, then there might be a threat to integrity,
but this is something that cannot be determined a priori.)

And so, the
quality of integrity is not only consistent with, but entails, that a person
should act in a way that shows an openness and a willingness to learn. Even if
one thinks one has the truth, it does not follow that one has the whole truth
and nothing except the truth. Integrity requires humility. And realism reminds
us that sometimes we have to heal with rather uncomfortable facts--and so we
cannot be blind to them, or ignore them,

Consequently,
integrity requires not just being true to one’s past principles, beliefs, and
values, but also being true to the reality of the situation. A person who
blindly ignores the features of the situation he finds himself in does not act
with integrity. But, likely, no one is entirely without integrity; some degree
of integrity seems to be a property of almost all human beings in the maturity
of their faculties.

Finally, because
integrity is a disposition, it logically requires freedom. One must [logically]
be free in order to act with integrity. (As noted above, identity, by itself,
does not require freedom.) The exercise of this freedom, however, must be
consistent with ‘who’ one is--with one’s basic principles and values--and with
the reality of the situations one is confronted with.

In other words,
for people to have integrity, they must be free to seek, pursue, and preserve
wholeness in their beliefs. And although one’s freedom is not absolute (because
it must be consistent with who or what one is), one must [again, logically] be
free enough so that the development of individual responsibility and the growth
of moral character are possible. You cannot be restricted or treated as a child
and still have integrity. If you don’t have freedom, then integrity is
impossible.

In short, for
integrity, one needs freedom or rights--rights of life, of various kinds of
liberty, of security; rights to be free from arbitrary discrimination,
arrest, interference[4];
rights to be recognized as a person. There is, of course, a certain logical
priority in these rights--you cannot have a right to security if you do not
already have a right to life--but this does not mean that rights are discrete
and separable from one another, and serially ordered. Rights come in
‘packages’; they are largely inseparable from one another (as seen above, in
discussing rights to security). Moreover, it is not obvious or required that
everyone must have exactly the same ‘package’ of rights in order to act with
integrity. And finally, unlike identity as such, integrity is a value, and so
one can appeal to other values in order to preserve or promote it.

I would add that
it is entirely beside the point to ask who or what 'confers' these rights or
freedoms; the reference to rights here is not a matter of them having been
ascribed by the state or having been seen as inherent in or inferred from the
dignity of the human person. The issue is, rather, a logical one. To have
integrity, and to be a person of integrity, one must be free and have certain
civil and political freedoms or rights. This is not to say that integrity is the
foundation of human rights, though I will argue in a moment that it can serve
as a basis of an argument for them.

In short, a person
who acts with integrity is acting in a way that shows

1.a
‘wholeness’ or consistency in his or her beliefs and values,

2.awareness
of oneself as a self or as a moral agent, and consciously seeking to make her
or his beliefs and values consistent

3.a
disposition--i.e., a way of looking at and approaching the world, and a
habitual intention to act so that one will respond to novel situations in a way
that is consistent with the past, and that attempts to bring one’s beliefs and
values, and so on, into coherence or wholeness.

4.a
recognition that one is often not able to deal these novel situations entirely
on one’s own terms

5.that,
while consistent, how one should act in a way is not completely determined in
advance.

6.that
one requires freedom, but a freedom that must nevertheless be consistent with
‘who’ one is, and

7.that
one must, therefore, have a set of human rights

III

At this point, I want to extend
these reflections on identity and integrity to the cultural sphere. I do not
want to go into a lengthy discussion of ‘culture’ here; for simplicity of
presentation, let me just offer the following description of how I understand
‘culture.’

The word
‘culture,’ in a broad sense, refers to "the whole way of life, material,
intellectual, and spiritual, of a given society"[5]--and
it is important to see this not as simply what exists in a society at a
particular moment, but as something dynamic and growing. (This reflects the
etymological relation of the term to the Latin word cultura--the
practice of cultivating land.) Moreover, when speaking of culture, we need to
refer to more than artistic and intellectual work. A discussion of the ‘whole
way of life’ of a society must mention its customs, its mores and moral
principles, its laws, its manner of educating its citizens, and its
understanding of the nature of the spiritual life. Culture, then, exists in
consciousnesses; it is present in institutions, practices, and so on, so
far as they reflect consciousnesses. And because ‘cultura’ is a
practice--usually a practice involving some ‘care’--we can say that to engage
in cultural activities takes time, takes imaginativeness, takes conscious
knowledge and action, takes seeing how things work together, and takes freedom.

Now the United
Nations Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (UNDHR) and, I would dare to say,
all cultures themselves agree on at least one thing, and that is the importance
of human flourishing--and perhaps even "the free and full development of
the human personality"[6]
In fact, even many of the critics of the discourse of human rights have
objected to it because it is inconsistent with the ‘cultural identity’ and the
flourishing of at least some societies.

When people speak
of ‘cultural identity,’ I take this to be closely analogous to ‘personal
identity.’

By ‘cultural
identity,’ then, I mean the ‘unity’ of ideas and beliefs, present in
institutions and practices, that constitute a system and a coherent ‘way of
life,’ that reflects the ‘mind,’ goals and aspirations of a group of persons,
but also its history, experience and environment. This will have not only a
continuity with the past and the prospect of a future, but a ‘sameness’ over time,
and this ‘sameness’ serves to distinguish that one group from other groups. But
cultural identity is not just ‘cultural difference’ or what is unique to such a
group; it unifies that group and it also includes what may be shared with
others (e.g., our humanity).

Cultural identity
is a fact--it is the description ofa
‘way of life.’ But although that way of life 'unites,’ enables life to be
lived, and provides a basis for individual identity, this says nothing positive
or negative about that way of life as a whole.

Does a culture
have value? I would say that, so far as it reflects the consciousness and will
of those who constitute it, and so far as it permits human flourishing--the
growth and development of those who are members of it, it does. But if that
‘culture’ is static and nothing more than the ‘status quo’ for many or for all,
then it isn’t obvious that it has value. So in answer to the question of
whether a culture should be preserved just because it exists, the answer is, I
think, no. Cultures should be preserved presumably because they permit human
flourishing or because they reflect or contain the kind of values referred to
above. But they need not be preserved just because they exist--and
certainly not preserved at all costs.

All existing
cultures that we know of today have had contact with other cultures, and rarely
has it been on equal terms. What at least one culture is confronted with, when
it has contact with another culture, is novelty. And it is rare that any
culture can control this experience of novelty. For example, novelty can be the
result of the invasion of one nation (with its own culture) by another, or the
result of other kinds of force--although the power of this novelty is also
largely due to the fact that there are elements within the ‘recipient’ culture
that, in some way or another, embrace it or hope to use it to further their own
personal ends. (At best, a culture can attempt to control the way in which it
deals with the novelty. But this presupposes that cultural leaders know exactly
what their culture is and involves, and what it needs or can use in order to
grow and flourish.)

Novelty has often
been seen as a problem or threat. It may raise questions about the status quo,
about what people can have or do, it may suggest alternatives to what exists
and, in a more thorough way, it may even suggest changes in how to understand
oneself and about which questions one might ask. Novelty, in short, disturbs
what is customary and, therefore, it can disrupt or threaten a culture. It
challenges the ‘sameness’ that is a feature of cultural identity.

Thus, the spread
of capitalism and secularism has consistently influenced and challenged values
and practices in the non-western world, but also in various places in North
America (e.g., in non-urban areas, and areas with strong religious
traditions)--and it continues to do so. But there are all manner of other
influences that have influenced these various cultures as well.

What we find in
many cultures today, then, is the presence of one set of ideas--cultural
identity--confronted with another set of ideas--those that are novel or new.
And while the traditional ideas that exist--and in part define a culture--have
a value so far as they provide a framework in which life can be led, and in
which flourishing is possible, a culture cannot ignore the new ideas
altogether, for, as I have suggested, the preservation of cultural sameness or
identity itself is not obviously a value.

So the question
is, how should we respond to novelty?

Here, I want to
offer a solution and propose that, in the place of ‘cultural identity,’ we
employ a concept that I call ‘cultural integrity.’

IV

When I discussed the notion of
‘personal integrity’ above, I noted that integrity does not mean that one
always holds all the same views. It suggests that there is a ‘wholeness’ or
consistency in the subject’s beliefs and values as well as an awareness of
oneself as a self. But it also implies that that subject has a
disposition--i.e., a way of looking at and approaching the world, and a
habitual intention to act in a way that shows one’s effort to bring these beliefs
and values directly to bear on future experience. Thus, when persons of
integrity encounter novelty, they recognize that they are often not able to
deal with these novel situations entirely on their own terms, and so they will
try to find a way of responding to these situations that is generally
consistent with the past, but that also respects the reality of the new
situation. Persons of integrity should act in a way that is consistent with
their past, but this is not a way that is completely determined in advance.

We can, I would
argue, extend the notion of integrity to cultures. Admittedly, in certain
respects, the analogy between ‘cultural integrity’ and ‘personal integrity’ is
not exact. Still, there are many important parallels. For example, given that
cultures have an identity that reflects a way of life, one can find within them
basic principles or values or beliefs that are more or less coherent with one
another and exhibit a ‘wholeness’ and consistency.

Now, since
‘integrity’ indicates a disposition, when we speak of ‘cultural integrity,’ I
am claiming that that culture (or its agents and leaders) have a disposition to
act. And to have integrity, that culture (or its agents and leaders) must act
in a way that is consistent with (though it is not simply dictated by) its
cultural identity and its dominant ideas. When a culture that exhibits cultural
integrity encounters novel situations, it must respond--and it must respond in
a way that takes account of that novelty seriously.

In taking account
of this novelty, a culture having integrity will seek coherence with this
novelty--and so it must respond with creativity. Obviously, this response will
often lead to some change in the culture--but change is a property of anything
that lives and grows

So, if we examine
a culture that exhibits integrity, we will find that that culture does not
always hold all the same views. Just as we can speak of an individual’s
integrity or wholeness even as the individual changes (i.e., matures), so we can
speak of a culture having a similar integrity even as it changes. Cultural
integrity involves being conscious of the importance of, and being true to,
one’s cultural identity, but also being capable of going beyond it. And it is
so far as a culture exhibits not only the possibility of a coherent life in
common, but a life with integrity, that we can speak that culture as having a
value and as deserving to be preserved.

V

Now, what is necessary for a
culture to exhibit or possess cultural integrity?

First, I would
argue that, just as personal integrity requires freedom and rights, so cultural
integrity also requires freedom and rights. But freedom and rights must exist
at both the ‘macro’ and the ‘micro’ levels in a culture. To begin with, the
culture as a whole must be free--i.e., that cultural community must have the
freedom to respond to novelty with integrity and in a way consistent with its
identity. (I would, of course, distinguish this from the ‘freedom’ of state
authorities to do whatever they see fit to guarantee or preserve the existing
political institutions, and at all costs.) Moreover, since cultures are ‘ways
of living’ for those within them, there must also be freedoms and rights for
individuals within those cultures, that allow them to act with integrity. For
cultural integrity as a whole to be possible, there must be a freedom for
individuals to participate in the construction of their culture.[7]
This implies, in turn, a robust theory of rights‑‑that is,
‘freedoms from’ certain restrictions, but also positive ‘freedoms to’ the means
to engage in "participative construction" in a meaningful way.

In short, human
rights serve as necessary preconditions for the existence of freedom and for
cultural integrity. And, in this sense, cultural integrity serves as a
foundation and justification of human rights. Thus, those who recognize the
value of cultural integrity, and who are concerned about preserving a culture
that exhibits integrity, must be committed to a discourse of human rights.

Second, cultural
integrity requires openness to dialogue and exchange. This does not mean that
one needs to ‘suspend’ or ‘bracket’ one’s own beliefs and values, but it does
require at least a willingness to listen to other beliefs. It also requires one
to be humble, in the sense that one must acknowledge that one does not know the
whole truth, and that there is the possibility of learning something
about oneself through the dialogue and exchange. (e.g., We see this feature in
religious movements such as ecumenism and in inter-faith dialogue). Action and
interaction with other cultures are not necessarily threats to one’s
‘cultural integrity.’ They may contribute to it. In fact, the categorical or
complete refusal to enter into dialogue or exchange is quite inconsistent with
acting with integrity.

This model of
cultural integrity does not mean, of course, that a culture has the luxury of
deciding for itself how and when to engage in dialogue and exchange. History is
full of examples where one sees the action and influence of very powerful
‘external’ cultural forces--e.g., Christianity, Islam, capitalism, and
secularism--leading to radical changes in cultures and societies. But what is
interesting, is that although such forces have led to significant changes in
those cultures and societies that they have come into contact with--in the
Americas, central and southern Africa, Australia, and Asia--it is not obvious
that they have violated the cultural integrity of those cultures. For, as
argued above, change is quite consistent with cultural integrity, and it is
worth noting that these forces have rarely, if ever, led to the homogeneity of,
or the disappearance of substantial diversity among, cultures.

What we should be
concerned about, is not the existence or occurrence of change, but rather the
mechanisms by which that change is brought about. The key is that both cultural
communities and individuals must be free to seek, pursue, and preserve a
wholeness and consistency in their beliefs and values. And although this
freedom is not absolute (because it must be consistent with who or what one
is), individuals and collectivities must [again, logically] be free enough so
that the development of responsibility and integrity is possible. Just as an
individual cannot be limited, or treated, as a child and still have integrity,
neither can a cultural community. If freedom does not exist, then integrity is
impossible.

So, again, we are
led to the notion of human rights

VI

The notion of cultural integrity,
then, entails the notion of human rights.

Now, some have
argued that concepts such as ‘human rights’ are ‘alien’ to countries outside of
what we call ‘the west,’ and that, because they are not part of the traditions
of these countries and entail different social relations, they therefore have
no place in these countries.

But the fact that
something is new or different or not explicit in tradition--that it may
destabilize the status quo and is the occasion of evolution in cultural
identity--does not entail that it is wrong or threatens cultural integrity.
Moreover, it is clear that the discourse of human rights has been embraced by
those groups and individuals in non western countries who have been oppressed,
and that this discourse is an appropriate means of expressing what they need in
order to pursue ‘integrity.’ Nor is this just a tendency characteristic of
oppressed groups. In Japan, for example, the word for the English notion of
‘liberty’ is ‘ji-yu’; it is a combination of two originally Chinese characters
that has, as some scholars point out, "never occupied a central position
in traditional literature" and that has a slightly negative connotation.
What is interesting is that, in contemporary conversation in Japan, when the
word ‘ji-yu’ is used, the ‘traditional’ negative connotations associated with
the word have diminished, and the more positive, ‘western’ notion of liberty is
meant. Thus, Japanese speak of ‘ji-yu’ of speech and association as
constitutional rights.

Furthermore, it
has been argued that such concepts as ‘human rights’ are not inherently opposed
to the culture of those societies in which they have not had an obvious place.
For in the articulation of the UN Declaration of Rights itself, we can count
among those who drafted it, Americans (including former U.S. First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt), Canadians, French, but also the Lebanese scholar Charles Malik, and
the Chinese diplomat and scholar, P.C. Chang.)

Consequently, even
if the term or the concept of human rights is alien to certain cultures, and
even if they are part of a ‘novelty’ and a reality that non-western cultures
have been confronted with, it is not obvious that the term threatens the
cultural integrity of a particular group. From what I have suggested, they may
even be necessary or required for that group to flourish.

It does not
follow, of course, that every culture must have exactly the same ‘package’
of rights in order to act with integrity, any more than every individual must
have the same package of rights. Even if rights are seen as fundamental to the
growth and development of a culture with integrity, there is room for a good
deal of cultural diversity and difference. Not only should there be such room
but (at the very least, for contingent reasons) there inevitably will be such
room. Nevertheless, certain basic rights to life and liberty and security, and
a number of corollaries or implications of those rights, are necessary for
individuals and cultures to flourish and thrive.

And this is, after
all and as noted above, something on which cultures and recent human rights
declarations agree--that human flourishing is important.

VII

To conclude, let me briefly
summarize some of the advantages of the precedingapproach to human rights.

In the
contemporary world, there is an increasingly strong interest in the
preservation of local culture and--at the same time--a powerful appeal, by
those who are oppressed, to a discourse of universal human rights. I have
suggested that, while cultural identity is important, the value of a
culture is to be found not so much in its identity as in its integrity. The
model of cultural integrity is one that claims that, for a culture to develop
and grow, and for human flourishing to be promoted, that culture must be open
to influence from the outside. But it should be open in a way where it seeks to
achieve a unity or consistency between the past and what this new influence
offers it.

Thus, first, I
claim that such an approach to culture provides a means of avoiding or
regulating cultural conflict and, second, I argue that this approach allows for
cultural difference. For cultural integrity to be possible, however, we need a
robust theory of human rights. And so, in the third place, I have suggested
that a discourse of human rights can be a realistic response to a culturally
diverse world, without its existence threatening cultural integrity.

If the proposals
in this paper are plausible, there are three corollaries that are particularly
significant to the issue of universal human rights, and that bear on the
questions raised at the beginning of this paper. First, a model of cultural
integrity provides a kind of philosophical foundation (though in a
non-traditional way) for a discourse of rights. Second, since human rights are
a necessary part of cultural identity, it follows that a discourse of human
rights is not inherently or distinctively occidental. And, finally, if the
model of cultural integrity is a desirable one, it follows that the promotion
of a discourse of human rights does not necessarily violate the cultural
integrity of non-European/non-American societies.

ENDNOTES

[1] This paper
was initially presented at the University of Pune, while I was a Visiting
Professorial Fellow in the Department of Philosophy. An earlier version was
read at the International Conference on Ethnicity, Cultural Identity and
Freedom (Afro‑Asian Philosophy Association), in New Delhi. I am grateful
to Professors Sharad Deshpande and R. Balasubramanian and their colleagues in Pune
and New Delhi for their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful for the
support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, under
Grant 410-00-0056.

[3] This was
the view expressed by delegates from China and Indonesia at the June 1993 World
Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna.

[4] These
are, of course, rights recognized in the United Nations Declaration of Human
Rights, under articles3, 4, 9, and 12.
Other rights could be similarly shown to be involved in personal integrity.